


Never Let You Down

by Proskenion



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Gen, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Mention of abuse, Past Abuse, Past Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Ramsay is His Own Warning, Rape/Non-con Elements, Song Lyrics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 11:55:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21015377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Proskenion/pseuds/Proskenion
Summary: Asha just received a phone called from the hospital telling her they just admitted Theon in intensive care. She remembers how she failed him and let him go away more than one year ago, when she last saw him. So she goes to fetch him, only to find him skinnier than ever and terrified, and she takes him home with her and tries to make up to him, as much as she can.





	Never Let You Down

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SelkieWife](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SelkieWife/gifts).

> Hello little squids ! 
> 
> So, this idea came to me while listening to David Bowie's Never Let Me Down (I know, another song inspired by a Bowie song haha) and well, I just started to write and let the things go as they came to my mind. I really hope you'll like it!

‘And where is he now ?’

‘He’s still in intensive care. As I said, he suffered from months of malnutrition and dehydratation, among other physical and psychological abuse. A psychiatrist should come to see him soon.’

Asha stays silent. One year and a half since she last saw him, and just like that, out of the blue, the hospital calls, telling her they have just admitted her brother in intensive care and that she should come as soon as possible. Her brother. Her baby brother. Theon. 

She remembers the last time she saw him. How could she forget ? 

‘And the girl ?’ she askes eventually.

‘She’s with the psychiatrist right now. She’s in better shape than your brother, but she’s really shaken.’

Sansa Stark. Last time she saw her, she was still a little girl. She never paid much attention to her, to be honest. But Asha couldn’t help to think it ironic. The Starks, always the Starks. Everything seemed to go back to the Starks. 

‘What happened exactly ? I’m sorry, I’m quite confused.’ 

‘That’s ok. Well, all we know for sure for now is that they both have been kept captive by the same man. That’s what Miss Stark sayed. Apparently, they managed to escape and they came here. We’ll know more very soon, since Miss Stark is talking to…’

‘A psychiatrist, yes, I know,’ Asha interrupted. ‘When do I get to see my brother ?’ 

‘I can’t tell you precisely. We’ll let you know.’ 

Asha groanes as the member of the hospital staff goes away. She sits on one of those highly uncomfortable hospital chair and waits. She sighes. 

Theon. One year and a half. Christmas. Something she has tried to forget and which were now coming back to her mind, as vivid as if it was yesterday. 

She had managed to convinced Theon to come for Christmas, for their mother’s sake. How much she had regretted it afterwards. But Theon had come. Balon was already drunk long before they started eating. They had just finished the starters when Theon and him had begun to argue. But Theon has been trying to smooth things, Asha could tell, and in order to help himself in such a task, he had started drinking more than necessary. It didn’t help. Theon did not stay long enough to even see the dessert, and he listened neither to his mother nor his sister. 

He drove to Robb’s place, where he had first intended to spend Christmas. But he was too drunk and too angry to drive safe, and he saw the other car way too late. 

No one in the crash survived except from him. And the probability for Theon to know the people in the other car was surely little, but he did. Ned Stark. Catelyn Stark. Bran Stark. Rickon Stark. Coming back from a Christmas dinner at Robb Stark’s place. 

Always, always the Starks. 

She laughes nervously. Life could be so ironic. Last time she saw her little brother, it was here, in the same service at the same hospital. One year and a half ago. Because of the Starks, because of Balon, or because of her, it doesn’t matter, really. He nearly died that day. She has been waiting for him the day he went out of the hospital. He had told her to leave him alone, and left. She hasn’t heard of him since then. And here she is again, waiting for him all over again as if time hasn’t passed at all. Waiting for him, and the Stark girl. She sneeres, probably not to cry or shout. 

After what felt like and endless wait, a nurse finally comes to her.

‘Can I see him ?’ Asha askes, jumping from her chair. 

‘No,’ says the nurse. ‘He sleeps.’

‘What ?’ 

Asha clenches her fists, trying to hold her frustration and growing irritation. The nurse apologises. She says Asha could come back tomorrow, then she goes but Asha calls her back :

‘Can I at least know what happened ?’ 

The nurse mumbled something, and Asha, more and more annoyed, demandes to see a doctor. 

She waits again, until finally a doctor comes. He tells her Theon has suffered multiple physical and psychological abuse, including starvation, beatings and sequestration, as well as sexual abuse. For months. Asha greets her teeth, trying not to get overwhelmed in front of the man. 

‘And the girl ?’ she askes.

‘Same as your brother, but for a shorter period.’ 

‘And who did that ?’

Asha feels like some sort of beast iss roaring inside her, and if she could hold hand on whoever did that she thinks she could actually kill them. 

‘They talked of a man, erm – Miss Stark said she started dating him some weeks ago and one night he brought her at his place and he never let her go. Your brother was already there.’ 

‘His name. I want his name.’

‘Er, I can’t…’

‘You can’t what ?’ Asha seethes. ‘My brother will tell me anyway so you can tell me now !’

She doesn’t know if Theon would tell her. How can she know ? She hasn’t seen him in so many months, and she doesn’t know how she will find him now. But she keeps a stature in front of the man and doesn’t show her inner doubts.

‘Tell me his name.’

‘Bolton,’ the doctor complies. ‘Ramsay Bolton.’ 

With a quick nod he leaves her, saying he has other patient to attend to. Asha watches him go, and she realises she has nothing else to do than leave, too. 

She enters her car, slamming the door violently. She stays like that for a while, staring in front of her. And suddenly, she lets out the flow of all her emotions go out in a loud, broken shout. She punches the wheel again and again, screaming, and screaming, and screaming. And when she stops, she realises she’s crying. She sniffs, whipes her tears, and starts the car. 

When she comes back the day after, Theon is waiting for her. When she enters the room, the shock is too strong, even for her. She gasps. 

Theon is so emaciated. He looks so fragile, so broken. He doesn’t look at her. His sitting on his bed, his legs sticked together and his hands on his knees, and he is bouncing back and forward, mumbling unintellegible words. When Asha calls his name, he jumps. He looks at her with wild, terrified eyes that pierces her through the heart. Seeing him so weak, it’s breaking her.

‘It’s me, Asha,’ she says.

He doesn’t answer. 

‘Your sister. Do you recognise me ?’

He looks at her, and then his face brightens. 

‘Asha, yes,’ he says. ‘Your name’s Asha. I know you, sister.’ 

She nods. She can’t move, and she can’t stop looking at him. He puts his face down and he starts moving back and forward again. She takes a huge breath and says :

‘I’ve come to get you home. Come on, get up.’

‘Home ?’ he asked softly, glancing at her. 

What happens next takes Asha aback. Theon starts trembling, his bouncing movement growing bigger and bigger, his incomprehensible babbling getting louder, and suddenly, he starts crying and curls up in bed.

‘No, no, please, not home,’ he begs, sobbing, ‘not home again, I escaped, I… Please…’ 

‘Theon !’

She runs to him but when she touches him, he jumps out of the bed and runs away from her. 

‘Don’t take me back home, please !’

‘I meant my home,’ she says, not knowing what to do. ‘I’m taking you at my place ! With me !’

Theon seems to calmed down a bit. He glances at her, unsure.

‘Your place ?’

‘Yes. My place.’

‘Not home, then ?’

‘Well… No. If you don’t want to, it’s not home,’ Asha says slowly, confused and afraid. ‘It’s just my place.’

‘Just your place,’ Theon repeats.

‘Yes. Will you come ?’ 

Theon hesitates before nodding slowly. Asha feels some sort of relief. 

‘Come on, then,’ she says. ‘Let’s go.’ 

But Theon does not follow. Instead, he asks :

‘And Sansa ? Where is Sansa ? Is she coming at your place too ?’ 

‘Well, no I don’t think so, I…’ 

‘I’m not leaving her.’

Asha is baffled by the sudden strength and determination in Theon’s voice. So she simply says :

‘Well, I guess we can take her with us, then. If she wants to.’

Theon nods again. And only then, he agrees to follow his sister. 

Sansa agrees to come at Asha’s place. She says she has nowhere else to go. Hasn’t she got a family ? Asha restrains herself to ask. She hasn’t got much of her family members left, after all. After the car crash, Robb and his two sisters, Sansa and Arya, the youngest, had stayed together. But only a few months later Robb had a serious accident at work. On the day after he was dead. 

Sansa explains that Arya and herself had left to America after that, to live with an uncle on their mother’s side of the family. Arya was still there, but Sansa never got used to it and went back to England. They had selled the family house, but she went there anyway when she came back, just to see it. That’s how she had met… Him. The new landlord. 

‘Wait,’ Asha interrupts her. ‘that Bolton guys lives in your previous house ?’

‘Yes,’ Sansa answers in a breath. 

Asha wants to comment on that but she notices how Theon cringes on his seat at the mention of that man’s name, so she doesn’t say anything. They stay silent until they arrives at Asha’s. 

Asha actually still lives in the same house as Theon and her did as children. It is a big house and she never left. Mainly because after her two older brother disappeared and Theon left, she knew she had to stay and look after her mother. Alannys was in a mental institution now, not to ever go out. She barely even recognises her daughter when she visits. As for Balon, he finally managed what he has been meticulously working on for years : killing himself with too much alcohol, and too little food. 

So Asha has stayed alone in that big house, and even if she wouldn’t admit it, she is glad, and relieved, to see it being filled with people again. But what people, though ? 

Theon is nothing more than a shadow of what he has once been. Asha remembers how he was always smiling, always joking about something, to the point it almost was annoying at some point, as if he could never be serious in his life. Because life isn’t serious, he would have said. But now, this miserable figure he has become seems incapable of smiling. He doesn’t even look anyone directly in the eyes. Asha thinks about what the doctor said Theon has been through, and she shivers. She wishes she could recklessly go find that Bolton monster and put him through the same horror he put her baby brother through. If there were a justice in this country, she should be allowed that, she thinks. 

She installs Theon in his former room, and Sansa in the one next door, which once was Maron’s room, long ago. 

The days become weeks, and soon the three of them fall into some sort of routine. After a few days they receive a call to inform them that Ramsay Bolton has been arrested. Both Sansa and Theon has been interviewed by policemen at the hospital, and they might need to come as witnesses for the trial. Asha isn’t really fond of the idea of Theon going, regarding the mental state he’s in, but she hopes that he’ll be better at the time. 

She can hear him wander in the house at night. Sometimes she looks at of her bedroom door and watches him discreetly. More than once, she has found him curled up on the floor, trembling and mumbling incoherent things. When it happens, she takes him back to bed and stays with him until he falls asleep again. She blames herself, she has blamed herself since that christmas night. Of course she knows dwelling on the past is pointless, so she focuses on here and now, and helping Theon through this ordeal. 

‘I’m here,’ she whispers to him one night. ‘I’ll never let you down again, little brother.’

Sansa looks tired, and Asha guesses that she doesn’t sleep much as well. She doesn’t know the girl well so she feels more awkward around her. But she notices how Theon and her has gotten closer. She wonders how it happened. Is it because of what they lived together or was this intimacy already here ? Asha doesn’t remember Theon mention her before. 

Weeks becomes months, and Asha is happy to see Theon seems to get better. He’s put on weight a little, he’s now capable of having his three meals a day. He also talks more, and starts looking Asha in the eyes again. Nights are still difficult, though, and he has nightmares. But more than once when Asha has heard him scream in his sleep and rushed to his room, she has found Sansa already there to comfort him. She started to wonder if the girl didn’t spent the entire nights with her brother.

She has to admit she feels a bit jealous. She should be the one taking care of him, Theon was her baby brother, after all. But then she remembers they went through Bolton’s abuse together, and she understands. So she tries to leave them space, and she watches from afar. 

Asha never managed to make Theon tell her what happened exactly. What she knows, she knows by Sansa. When Ramsay Bolton took the girl to her place to confine her against her will, Theon was already there. He would stay locked up in the cellar. Bolton never once called him by his real name, but by an awful nickname he had given him : _Reek_. This has made Asha’s blood boil.

At first Sansa would stay with Bolton in the house but one day he put her in the cellar with Theon. Sansa insisted to escape, and one day when Bolton came down to them, they did. According to Sansa, without Theon it would never have worked out. But she wouldn't say anything more about it.

Asha never knew what happened exactly in that house for both of them, but she could see the more visble scars, and she guessed about the less visible ones. The doctor’s words has stayed stemped in her mind. _Beatings. Sexual abuse. Starvation._ She would think about that Bolton guy in prison and wish that he would stay there forever, and if she was a believer, she would pray for him to burn in Hell after he died. 

Asha was at work during the day, which means that Theon and Sansa was left alone. Most of the time they would stay together in silence. Sansa would knit a lot. She has always loved that. She has already knitted Theon a scarf and a hat. She was now working on a jumper. Theon loved just sit near her and watch. 

One rainy day whe they are home together, Sansa decides to turn the radio on. She is sitting on the chair just next to the window in the living-room and she is knitting, humming absent-mindedly the songs on the radio. Theon, seated on the sofa with his knees up against his chest and his arms around them, is looking at her. Adele stops singing in the speakers, and her voice is soon replaced by David Bowie’s. Sansa lookes up. She smiles. 

‘I love that song,’ she says, putting the sound louder. 

_And though my days are slipping by_  
And nights so cruel  
I thought I'd die 

She looks at Theon. 

‘I remember Robb and you listening to Bowie, Queen, The Beatles… Arya and I would listen through the door of his room,’ she says, smiling softly. 

_When I needed soul revival I called your name  
When I was falling to pieces I screamed in pain_

Theon glances at her but stays silent. He remembers, but the memory is painful. So many things he has tried to put behind, because… Because all that is gone now, because of him. 

_Your soothing hand that turned me round_  
A love so real swept over me  
You danced your little dance 'till it made me cry  
You were shakin' like this honey doing that 

Theon hasn’t realised that Sansa has put her knitting work down to come closer to him, and when she puts her hand on his shoulder he jumps. He sees the tears stuck in her eyelids, and he starts crying. But Sansa’s hand glides from his shoulder to his cheek. She bends over and kisses him on his forehead. 

‘Sssshhhh,’ she whispers, taking him in her arms. 

But Theon can’t stop crying. And this showing of love and affection is more painful than it should. He can’t take it. He doesn’t deserve it. 

‘Robb wouldn’t want you to think like that, you know,’ she says, as if reading his mind. 

She stops the embrace and stands up, keeping Theon’s hand in her. 

_When all your faith is failing _  
Call my name  
When you've got nothing coming  
Call my name 

‘I want to dance,’ she says, wiping away some tears. ‘This song always makes ma want to dance.’ 

And with a smile, she starts dancing. Shyly, at first, but then it’s like she forgets the world around her. She closes her eyes and starts shaking her head, putting her arms up, spiralling. Theon watches, fascinated, hypnotised. Without him realising, a smile slowly appears on his lips.

_I'll be strong for all it takes_  
I'll cover your head till the bad stuff breaks  
I'll dance my little dance till it makes you smile  
Shaking like this honey doing that 

Sansa burst into a laugh and it’s like a spell. Theon stands up and comes to her. She opens her eyes and when she sees him next to her, she falls on his neck. Before Theon knows it, she puts a kiss on his mouth. He looks at her with wide eyes. He wants to protest, to run away, but she holds him so tight he feel she can’t move. He opens his mouth but she puts a finger on his lips to hush him. 

‘Don’t say it,’ she says, ‘it isn’t true.’ 

And she starts dancing again. Theon doesn’t, but he stays here with her as she turns around him. 

_Never let you down  
I'll never let you down_

They don’t notice Asha coming in and watching them. She makes sure they don’t notice her. She smiles, and walks silently away to leave them some intimacy. For the first time in months, she feels like her baby brother is back. _He was smiling_, she thinks. 

_I'll never let you down_  
I'll never let you down  
Oh no 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, take care <3


End file.
